Adele Elliott: Boob-tube politics

Are you tired of all the politicians and their inane rhetoric yet? Well, I hope not, because there is much more to come. Still, it is difficult not to be disgusted.

No matter if you are right or left, a Democrat or a Republican, it seems that no one is saying anything that actually helps real people. There is more hot air and "mean"ingless chatter than answers that will truly help.

We hear a lot about Mitt Romney's car elevator and offshore wealth. The car elevator may be a non-issue (who knows with what luxuries I would shower my pets, if I had Mitt's millions); however, bank accounts in the Cayman Islands are a concern. There continues to be controversy about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Let it go. We have seen it and it is real.

Many people have issues with the religions of both candidates. Romney is Mormon. They are known for wearing undies that keep them chaste. If only this were true. Mothers of teens everywhere would surely be scooping them up by the dozen.

The fact that the president's family is Christian is still a question. Why? He has been a devout Christian for many decades. At Camp David he worships with a Southern Baptist pastor. Few people in the Golden Triangle would object to that.

Why aren't we concerned with this country's profound problems? We have homeless citizens living on the streets of every city. The economy is so damaged that those who would have once been considered middle class are now struggling to support their families, facing foreclosure, being "downsized," and victims of corporate machines.

And it's going to be hard to recoup our losses. The unemployment rate in Lowndes County alone was 10.80 percent in July of this year.

Medicines and medical care are so costly that people who cannot afford them are dying from poverty. Every night, Americans of all ages go to bed hungry.

Yes, I am interested in the honesty of the candidates. Revealing the truth about their financial history is important. However, I am much more worried about the decline in the quality of our lives, and most especially in the state of education, in this country.

No president starts with a clean slate. Each must work with a long history of issues created by their predecessors. We are raising a generation that may be too dumb to fix the problems that will face them.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics."

A new study finds "lack of global competency skills" among 18-24 year-olds in the U.S.

Seventy-eight percent did not know Mandarin is the most commonly spoken language in the world. Seventy-seven percent of respondents cannot correctly identify Canada as the U.S.'s largest trading partner. Seventy-two percent of students surveyed cannot identify in which region Afghanistan is located.

Are you worried? I am terrified about America's overwhelming problems. And yet we seem too unaware to even understand the importance of our state of affairs.

"While its rivals covered the solemn commemoration of the first plane striking the World Trade Center on Tuesday, NBC's 'Today' show aired Kardashian family matriarch Kris Jenner talking about her breast augmentation."

We are a country more interested in boobs, both physical and those who want to run the United States, than we are real issues. God save us.

Adele Elliott, a New Orleans native, moved to Columbus after Hurricane Katrina.